SEMA Tuner Special: NOPI Nationals: Car Show with a 'Tude: Jello wrestling is only part of the Nopi Nationals experience

RESPECT? Not enough, considering I was the one who started this whole import tuner deal back in 1971. That’s when I ordered a one-piece chrome exhaust for my Volkswagen Beetle from the J.C. Whitney catalog. It cost $21.95. In my parents’ driveway, I removed the two little cigar-sized tailpipes and bolted on the new exhaust, with no help from my crew or my peeps or my posse, and there was no camera crew to tape it for Spike TV, which today, I know, is hard to imagine.

The exhaust conversion was a success in that the Beetle sounded like a flatulent yak. My only mistake was to point it toward the driver’s side, so when I’d try to order at the Jack in the Box drive-in—which we called "Jack in Your Hat" because we were rebels, see?—the girl on the speaker would say, "What? What? Can you turn your engine off?"

Big tires, chrome wheels and monster engines are all part of the NOPI Nationals, the largest sport compact show in the country.

So I tell this story to some kid with a Toyota Celica here at the NOPI Nationals in the infield of the Atlanta Motor Speedway, a Celica that has the stock 1.8-liter four-cylinder but a whale-tail spoiler in the back, to help—what? Keep the rear end planted?

Anyway, the kid’s eyes glaze over as I talk old school about the early years of this whole import scene. Punk! All attitude.

NOPI stands for Number One Parts Inc., a company founded in 1966 in Atlanta, and it has evolved from selling just Volkswagen parts into what J.C. Whitney wishes it still was. NOPI is relevant to people with lots of disposable income, who—if they can’t visit one of six NOPI stores in Georgia—seem content to order their lime-green spark plug wires from the company’s website, .

The NOPI Nationals started in 1986, again evolving from a Volkswagen event to the largest sport compact show in the country. It costs $40 for a weekend pass, $25 if you can only handle Saturday or Sunday.

If competitions aren’t your thing, there are acres of cars, and beautiful women, on display for perusal.

But then, you’d miss so much. Such as the inevitable Swimsuit Competition, won by Nikki Zeno, who said, "Words can’t express how much this honor means to me." It also means $3,000 and a magazine cover shoot for a publication I never heard of, but don’t hold that against it. This event is described in the official program as a contest with "sweet honeys" that "has enough ba-donk-a-donk and ta-tas to make every male within a two-mile radius stand up and yell ‘Yeh-Yah!’"

You would also miss the Professional Jello Wrestling, where bikini-clad women sit astride a padded horse in an inflatable boxing ring and try to knock each other into the green jello with pillows. Except it isn’t jello: Trained specialists poured eight garbage cans full of the stuff into the ring, and while it sort of looks like jello, it’s all in little chunks, sort of oily, and has no odor. Or taste. What is it, then? "It’s an absorbent, like they use in baby diapers," said a man who spoke with authority. I am reminded that this is professional jello wrestling, but even professionals can’t seem to keep from falling out of their swimsuits. If this was NASCAR, they’d fine the wrestlers $10,000 and 25 points.

There’s also a burnout contest, where extra points are awarded for shredding tires. And hydraulic hop contests, contested mostly by little driver-less Japanese pickups that bounce from hydraulic pumps run by as many as 14 car batteries, which occasionally catch on fire. There are loud-stereo contests, typically won by systems that can draw blood with bass lines.

And there’s music, mostly rap, shouted from a stage swamped by spectators. Well, not always: For Sunday’s singing of the National Anthem, the stage was swamped by 17 people.

All this excitement is announced, loudly, by the roaming Official Voice of NOPI, J-Bird, and his wide-eyed, pro wrestler sidekick, Buff Bagwell, who screams like Jesse Ventura used to. I don’t know why, but watching Buff makes me want to remind kids that steroids are bad for you, which is not to say Buff Bagwell would ever take steroids. I would never say that, not with all the unemployed lawyers.

The hopping demonstration, above, at times can get a little carried away. But not to worry. enough hands easily restored the truck back on its wheels.

The NOPI Nats is well regarded by the area natives, appearing even in the calendar of the local Chamber of Commerce. There’s the hint of a dark shadow from a tragedy that occurred here in 2002, though: Alisson Alvarez, 19, disappeared during the event, and was found a couple of days later in an off-limits part of the speedway, strangled and beaten. Toby Dearing, 24, was charged with her murder, and his wife and brother were charged with tampering with evidence, as they allegedly helped Dearing move the body.

Dearing, who was working for a vendor at the NOPI Nationals, apparently offered Alvarez a ride to the bathroom on his golf cart, and took her to a restricted area. Last June he was found guilty of murder, and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

This year there were no such problems. "Pretty uneventful, from our standpoint," said Maj. Keith McBrayer of the Henry County Sheriff’s Department. "I don’t know how the NOPI people feel about it, but we thought it was very successful."

The NOPI people agree. "We had 7305 entries, 107,000 in attendance, and we offered more than ever for contestants and spectators," said NOPI’s Bobby Evans, event coordinator. Still, it could have been a little better, said NOPI president Michael Meyers, "and I attribute that to the hurricanes. Some of our day-trippers couldn’t come from Alabama, Florida panhandle."

Still, the competition was fierce. Sort of. There are 31 pages of car show winners, 1218 of them by actual count, resulting from rather specific categories. Not to take anything away from Arturo Delgado, for instance, winner in the "Asian, Sport Compact, Eclipse/Talon 1995-1999 Non-Turbo, Conservative" category, but when you see a car in Auto Trader advertised as "winner, NOPI Nationals," it might not be like, say, a win at Pebble Beach.

NOPI features a variety of events and displays to satisfy attendees’ gasoline-powered aspirations. Autocrossing and drifting, above, are all showcased.

Even so, this is a tough place to draw attention. Large breasts help; large female breasts, even better. Vendor booth after booth lured countless two-legged male target demographics using scantily clad women. Such as the Tsunami booth, which featured several statuesque young sweet honeys (See? I’m trying!). Tsunami, I learned, makes metal boxes with wires coming out, with those boxes available either in regular-type metal or aluminum-type metal. Once again, all this makes me feel very old, and sad, and sort of like a narc. I don’t have a single recording, I realized, by any of the artists represented at the Dope House Records booth.

The NOPI Nationals will return next fall, and by then, I promise I’ll be ready.